


The Last Justicar

by wired



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-06
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wired/pseuds/wired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caz is perplexed that someone has gone before him in the cells at Gortoget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Justicar

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for The God's Delight, a challenge at the lj community Chalion-Ibra. The prompts consisted of a fragment of John Donne poetry, one of the gods, and a concrete object.
> 
> Who e'er rigg'd fair ships to lie in harbours,  
> And not to seek lands, or not to deal with all?  
> Or built fair houses, set trees, and arbours,  
> Only to lock up, or else to let them fall?  
>  _Confined Love_
> 
> Father
> 
> Stone

Cazaril picked at the crumbling mortar on the parapet as he thought it through.

On the one hand, they were attempted deserters, and under the Father's laws, their lives were forfeit. Judgment ruled that even if it was rational to attempt desertion, it was also important that there be a stiff penalty for it, to keep entire armies from unravelling at a moment.

On the other hand, they were mouths that had to be fed, on Gortoget's rapidly dwindling resources, and there had to be jailers and executioners. Cazaril was sure he did not have the resources or men to spare to keep the deserters prisoner until the relief arrived.

The waste of it all. His men wasting away, and the deserters, on the same rations as everyone else, but safe from the fighting in the defaulter's cells of the fortress. What good were soldiers whose deaths bought nothing, but cost everyone?

He shrugged and turned away from the parapet, the rawness of his fingers hidden by the cuts and scrapes of the last assault. What good could these soldiers be?

Gathering his aide, he stumped down the stairs, first off the shield wall, and then down further into the excavated depths of the fortress, passing empty store rooms and echoing halls. Down further, until the air was cool and smelled of wet stone and shit. He left his aide at the door and entered the room of the first prisoner, an older man, by his callouses, a farmer pressed into service.

Before Cazaril could say anything, the man burst out, "I am glad He sent you. I've been waiting."

Cazaril leaned back against the door. "I was sent by no one. I have come down to talk to you about your sentence, and your death."

"My death is doomed upon me, and can't anything be done about that. But I saw the Chief Justicar, and he told me to wait for you, and do what you asked, and I could still, could still make things right." The farmer smoothed his smock and stood straight before Cazaril, and he recognized the man as one who had pushed the ladders back, that first frantic night.

"There is no justicar here in Gortoget, only rats and scarecrows. You are dreaming fever dreams, locked up in here. No, I came to tell you that I would let you out and erase the desertion charges --"

"--if I would fight for you again."

Cazaril blinked and the farmer-soldier leaned forward. "That's what he said, the justicar. He said I should go out of the sally port and set fire to the tents, and that I would die, but it would be a useful death, not stupid and wasteful."

Cazaril thought about trying again to correct this man's impression that there was some fey justicar wandering around the cells, dispensing suicidal plans. His tired brain caught up to what the man had said about the sally port. It was almost exactly what he had been planning to suggest himself. He looked at the man, who was standing calmly before him, ready to die. "Um, I was... you understand that you are condemned, and I cannot and would not change that, even if you were to survive, correct?"

The man nodded. "He said, the justicar told me I would die. You mustn't worry, sir. I know. But it won't be a wasted death. I'll go to the Father."

Dimly, this was beginning to make a strange kind of sense. But then, lately, everything had seemed clear and strange, like a stilled fountain. Was the imaginary justicar some agent of the Father's? No matter.

"You’ll go tonight, then. Go up to the parade grounds and ask Sergeant Duz for pitchy torches." He waited until the man had walked out of the cell, then looked around to see if there was any sign that anyone had been there. But it was bare stone, empty of intent. He wanted to sit down and see if anyone would come tell him that his death was foredoomed, and he could stop holding it all together. But no one came, so he shrugged and walked out, leaving the cell door open behind him.

His aide opened the next door for him. The prisoner surged forward. "I've been waiting for you, sir! He said you’d come."


End file.
